NATURAL HISTORIANS' STRATAGEMS for COMMUNICATING EMPIRICISM and THEORY Annette Meyer Generational

HISTORY IN A TEST TUBE: NATURAL HISTORIANS’ STRATAGEMS FOR COMMUNICATING EMPIRICISM AND THEORY

Annette Meyer

Generational Change: Types of Scholars of the High and Late Enlightenment

In historical accounts the figure of Albrecht von Haller was frequently used to distinguish the typical scholar of the high Enlightenment from that of the late Enlightenment. Although in the main treatments of the history of science Haller is firmly fixed as a Newtonian from the outset,1 in overviews of natural history he is characterised primarily as the last polymath, a persistent theorist of preformation, and a remaining expo- nent of the old, classifying method. This older form of natural history by tabulation had, according to sociologist Wolf Lepenies in his seminal study of this subject, reached a highpoint of crisis with Haller and was subsequently replaced by a new form of the history of nature.2 Although Haller fits the ideal image of the polymath of the early modern period, he was thus nonetheless said to have been unable to recognise some of the forward-looking potential of modern scientific development due to the constraints of his traditional religious worldview. This view of Haller, as well as of other protagonists in the history of science, has been criticised as an anachronistic approach that overlooks the original contributions Haller made in his own time.3 Beyond this criticism of the teleological approach of modern history of science, which considered the “scientificity” of perception, inventions and judgements to be endangered when knowledge and belief appeared to be entangled in sup- posedly improper fashion,4 it is of interest to note that Haller saw himself

1 Shirley A. Roe, ‘The Life Sciences’, in Roy Porter (ed.), The Cambridge History of Sci- ence, vol. 4: Eighteenth-Century Science (Cambridge 2003), 397–416: 402. 2 Wolf Lepenies, Das Ende der Naturgeschichte. Wandel kultureller Selbstverständlich- keiten in den Wissenschaften des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt/M. 1978), 62. 3 Richard Toellner, ‘Medizin in der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, in Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.), Wissenschaften im Zeitalter der Aufklärung (Göttingen 1985), 200. 4 Bruno Latour provided the clearest account of this method of the “second Enlight- enment . . . of the nineteenth century”, describing it as consisting in qualification of “all earlier thought” as a prelude to modern science and, thus, as “unusable or imprecise”. See

© Annette Meyer, 2013 | doi:10.1163/9789004243910_033 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access 752 annette meyer as a witness to epochal change. He reflected on the question of the future of the sciences, as well as the shift in perspectives that could result from generational change and the risks it involved. The present article attempts to explore this change in perception in the field of natural history and to illustrate it by referring to the methodological reflections of those who studied this field, beginning with Haller and his view of himself as a natural historian.5 The representatives of the Scottish Enlightenment are an appropriate counterpoint to Haller in this frame of reference, as they not only applied the concept of natural history in numer- ous ways but also did a great deal to give it a further theoretical basis. In the hands of Scottish scholars, natural history grew to become more than an encyclopaedic compilation of the empirical facts of nature described by the term historia naturalis. By contrast, natural history offered a suitable context for developing methods and for understanding newly generated knowledge—whether in cosmology, natural philosophy or anthropology— and was no longer considered as an irritation of the established world-view but as the basis of a new one. Jean Starobinski has described this method of Enlightenment philosophy as a “remedy” [remède] that was meant to cure the contradictions of the modern world.6 This difficult remedy, however, also required legitimisation of the stratagems [légitimation de l’artifice] applied as a reaction to fundamental changes in perspective and to the

Bruno Latour, Wir sind nie modern gewesen. Versuch einer symmetrischen Anthropologie (Frankfurt/M. 1998), 51. 5 Bettina Dietz has most recently called attention to the disproportion between the mass of studies in natural history produced in the eighteenth century and the small amount of sporadic scientific research done on them so far. Bettina Dietz, ‘Naturgeschichte, Epis- temologie und Material Culture. Eine Einführung’, in Ulrich Johannes Schneider (ed.), Kulturen des Wissens im 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin and New York 2008), 595–587. Although Michel Foucault already designated natural history as one of the most fruitful fields with respect to the epistemological transition on the threshold of the modern age, following the pioneering study by Wolf Lepenies, a systematic synopsis of the genre is still lacking. In the Anglo-Saxon world in particular, research frequently focuses on the history of biology. See Paul Lawrence Farber, ‘Natural History’, in Alan Charles Kors (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (Oxford 2003), 124–130. As a consequence, other fields of study are not given due attention, such as cultures, customs and humankind, whose rich perspectives are presented in a volume compiled by Nicholas Jardine, Jim Secord and Emma Spary (eds.), Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge 1996). The best systematic overview of the change in the concept of natural history is still Phillip R. Sloan, ‘Natural History 1670–1802’, in Robert C. Olby et al. (eds.), Companion to the History of Modern Science (London and New York 1996), 295–313. See also Phillip R. Sloan, ‘The Gaze of Natural History’, in Christopher Fox, Roy Porter and Robert Wokler (eds.), Inventing Human Science: Eighteenth-Century Domains (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1995), 112–151. 6 Jean Starobinski, Le remède dans le mal. Critique et légitimation de l’artifice à l’âge des Lumières (Gallimard 1989).

Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access history in a test tube 753 uncertainty resulting from a rapidly changing world. Starobinski discovered such stratagems in completely new theoretical models of interpretation in the Enlightenment literature, by means of which empirical material and new worldviews were communicated.

Epoché as a Maxim of the Natural Historian: Haller and Hume

In the context of research on Haller, it hardly needs to be mentioned that it is he who deserves credit for the dissemination of Isaac Newton’s ideas and the widespread enthusiasm about his genius, at least throughout Ger- man-speaking Europe, but also beyond. Haller and his teacher, Herman Boerhaave, shared the opinion that new findings in natural philosophy could be made only through observation and experiment, as Newton had demonstrated. From this perspective, the particular contribution of New- tonian physics was, above all, that a worldview which had been shaken in many respects had again been brought into balance: the discovery of two basic forces had restored the perfect order of creation. The image of a single, perfect divine force at work since the origin of the world had found its scientific expression in an empirically ascertainable law—the law of gravity. This restoration of the order of creation was the prerequisite for unlocking the universal laws inherent in this order; this applied to natural philosophy as well as to natural history as its empirical databank. Boerhaave already determined, however, that understanding the “last metaphysical and the first physical causes” was “not necessary for the physician, nor useful or possible”. Haller underscored this view and even sharpened it with respect to his own field of research.7 Anatomy should be content with observation of phenomena and not attempt to formulate universal theories. Regarding the distinction he had discovered between the irritable and the sensible parts of the human body, he wrote: A theory, however, about why these two qualities are not present in some parts of the body but occur in other parts—such a theory, I must say, I cannot promise; for I am convinced that the source of both of these forces is hidden in the innermost construction, and that it is far too subtle to be discovered with the aid of the anatomical knife or the microscope. Concerning

7 This interpretation follows the groundbreaking studies by Richard Toellner, Albrecht von Haller. Über die Einheit im Denken des letzten Universalgelehrten (Wiesbaden 1971) and Otto Sonntag, ‘Albrecht von Haller on the Future of Science’, Journal of the History of Ideas 35 (1974), 313–322.

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what cannot be discovered with the knife or the microscope, however, I have no desire to do much conjecturing; indeed, I gladly refrain from teach- ing what I do not know myself. It is pride born of ignorance to want to show others what one cannot see oneself.8 The list of similar quotes from Haller could easily be continued, reading like an echo of the preliminaries of Netwon’s Principa and providing more than obvious evidence of Haller’s understanding of science and his fas- cination with the term “force”.9 Natural phenomena could be observed and connected in terms of cause and effect—as in the case of anatomical structure and physiological function. But nevertheless it was not possible to draw conclusions about an underlying ultimate cause on the basis of all these many empirical findings. Although a reconciliation of scientific hypotheses and empirical findings was possible in the operational procedures of the empiricist, a theory that made an equation of cause and effect readable in both directions could not be formulated in Haller’s view.10 In this respect attention has been called to the remarkable fact that Haller, unlike his student Johann Georg Zimmermann, made no attempt at systematically theorising the practice of a physician as the “empirical science of medicine”.11 Haller accepted the working of forces as a process whose manifestations he could observe as a scientist but whose deeper logic he could not and should not penetrate. In this sense his criticism of the work of the French natural scientist Georges-Louis LeClerc, Comte de Buffon, and particularly Buffon’s Reflexions sur le système de la generation (1751), harboured an appeal for restraint—an epoché—that was owed to the contingency of prevailing forces. Haller saw in Buffon’s model an under- mining of the self-moderation of the empiricist and of respect for the magnificence of creation; scientific hubris was at work if Buffon believed that with his concept of the process of becoming he had explained the order of nature in terms of temporal evolutionary logic. In order to sustain

8 Albrecht von Haller, ‘Von den empfindlichen und reizbaren Theilen des menschli- chen Körpers, den 22. April 1752 in der Kön. Ges. der W. zu Göttingen vorgelesen’, Ham- burgisches Magazin, oder gesammlete Schriften, zum Unterricht und Vergnügen 13 (1754), 227–259. 9 See Simone de Angelis, Von Newton zu Haller. Studien zum Naturbegriff zwischen Empirismus und deduktiver Methode in der Schweizer Frühaufklärung (Tübingen 2003), 240. 10 Sandra Pott identified the “stratagem” in Haller’s method in the fact that he distinguished, according to the early modern tradition, between the operational level (formal and material causes) and the metaphysical level (final cause). Sandra Pott, Säkularisierung der Wissenschaften in der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin and New York 2002), 2 vols., I: 118. 11 Toellner 1971 (note 7), 212f.

Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access history in a test tube 755 this theory, the force at work in Buffon’s system would have to be an agent endowed with reason, according to Haller, that continually and unfailingly aimed in the same direction contrary to the laws of random variation. This admonition was addressed to an entire generation of younger scholars whose primary aspiration was no longer to reconcile their scientific findings with belief in revelation but to investigate all remaining myster- ies of nature. It should be noted briefly here that this criticism appeared to anticipate such auxiliary constructs in natural history as Kant’s intention of nature [Naturabsicht] and Smith’s invisible hand.12 At about the same time as Haller, the Scottish philosopher David Hume, who was only three years younger, formulated what appears at first glance to be a comparable scientific credo: self-restriction of the sciences to the experimental method, a retreat from metaphysical questions, and renewal of philosophy as an empirically based science of man which, in the form of an epistemology corroborated by inductive reasoning, was to serve as the only reliable basis for all other sciences. By contrast with Haller, however, Hume was not a professor who propagated this theory from the lectern of a university or European academy, but an academic exile who initially veiled his convictions in the anonymously published Treatise of Human Nature (1739/40) and only later made them public in considerably moderated form. The radicalism of his project, which was to deny him university employment throughout his life,13 was expressed in the subtitle of his first work: “An ATTEMPT to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning INTO MORAL SUBJECTS”.14 The substantial differ- ence between Hume and Haller thus consisted in the fact that Hume did not see divine creation as the ultimate force behind the order of nature,

12 Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner elaborated the long underestimated significance of natural history metaphors in eighteenth-century texts for the development of modern philoso- phies of history already in his dissertation. See Heinz Dieter Kittsteiner, Naturabsicht und unsichtbare Hand. Zur Kritik geschichtsphilosophischen Denkens (Frankfurt/M., Berlin and Wien 1980). 13 Stigmatisation as a heretic, which Hume had experienced since the appearance of the Treatise, proved to be stronger than the enterprising efforts of his friends in trying to secure a professorship for him: “I am inform’d, that such a popular Clamour has been raised against me in Edinburgh, on Account of Scepticism, Heterodoxy & other hard Names, which confound the ignorant, that my Friends find some Difficulty, in working out the Point of my Professorship, which once appeared so easy.” David Hume to Matthew Sharpe of Hoddam 1744, in David Hume, Letters, ed. by J.Y.T. Greig (Oxford 1932), 2 vols., I: 59. For biographical details, see Ernest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume (second edn., Oxford 1980), 153f. 14 Emphases in the original. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. by L.A. Selby- Bigge (second edn., Oxford 1978), title page.

Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access 756 annette meyer but instead proposed that precisely this presumption constituted a fundamental obstacle to the development of the sciences so far. According to Hume, the premise of an ultimate divine force had caused people to perceive on principle a constitutive connection between phenomena in the natural world—a fatality—which was at the least unverifiable and probably did not even exist. His critique was thus directed above all at metaphysics, the previous success of which, in his view, was less grounded in scientific investigation than focused on logical subtleties and rhetorical bluster. In order to redress this situation, it was necessary in Hume’s eyes “to leave the tedious lingering method, which we have hitherto followed, and instead taking now and then a castle or village on the frontier, to march up directly to the capital or centre of these sciences, to human nature itself; which being once masters of, we may every where else hope for an easy victory”.15 The military metaphor Hume used to describe his project was not lacking in inner logic, given that its author intended not only to launch certain reforms within the sciences but to install a radical new system, thereby arousing powerful opponents: From this station we may extend our conquests over all those sciences, which more intimately concern human life; . . . There is no question of importance, whose decision is not compriz’d in the science of man; and there is none, which can be decided with any certainty, before we become acquainted with that science. In pretending therefore to explain the principles of human nature, we in effect propose a compleat system of the sciences, built on a foundation almost entirely new, and the only one upon which they can stand with any security.16 With this battle plan, Hume gave a change of direction to the scientific tradition that was then being newly established.17 Experience and observation were now no longer to be used only in coming to grips with the phenomena of the physical world; they were to be applied to the moral

15 Ibid., XVI. 16 Ibid. 17 Reinhard Brandt considered Hume to have established “new moral sciences” [Geis teswissenschaften] with his science of man. See Reinhard Brandt, ‘Einführung’, in David Hume, Ein Traktat über die menschliche Natur (Hamburg 1989), vol. 1, XI. On the origin and development of the concept of “moral sciences” from David Hume to John Stuart Mill and the translation of his System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (1843) into German (System der deduktiven und induktiven Logik, 1863), see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (sixth edn., Tübingen 1990), 2 vols., I: 9.

Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access history in a test tube 757 world as well.18 Furthermore, the science of man, with its conclusions about nature and the cognitive faculty of human beings, was to constitute the foundation for all other sciences. The reason why a project of this sort—applying a method based on experience to moral philosophy—had not been undertaken long before could be found, as Hume explained it, in the history of science. After all, the necessary time interval between his project and that of his forerunners was the same as that between Thales and Socrates. As his forerunners Hume cited “Lord BACON and some late philosophers in England, who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing, and have engaged the attention, and excited the curiosity of the public”.19 According to Hume, it was now time to bid a final farewell to the previous practice in moral philosophy of passing off hypotheses and assumptions as principles of the first order.20 The science of man faced the same difficulty as all other sciences in establishing principles a priori, as no science could probe deeper than experience. The disadvantage of moral philosophy compared with other sciences, however, was the fact that it could not conduct its experiments intentionally as, for example, in physics. Experiments of intentional design undertaken on human beings must inevitably fail, as the intention would always influence the outcome. This was a problem that certainly contributed to the delayed acceptance of observation-based findings in this field. For this reason, the science of man would have to proceed with particular caution and choose its sources with care: We must therefore glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious observation of human life, and take them as they appear in the common course of the world, by man’s behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their

18 It has been emphasised that the central meaning of Hume’s Treatise consists in this connection between “human science” and “natural science”. Regarding the concept of the “Science of Man”, Hobbes, Grotius and Pufendorf presented starting points, to which Hume, however, did not explicitly refer. See Christopher Fox, ‘Introduction. How to Pre- pare a Noble Savage: The Spectacle of Human Science’, in id. et al. 1995 (note 5), 2. On the particular Scottish contribution in the connection between “natural” and “moral” philosophy, see Richard Olson, Scottish Philosophy and British Physics 1750–1880. A Study in the Foundation of the Victorian Scientific Style (Princeton 1975), 12. 19 With “some late philosophers in England” Hume was referring to “Mr. Locke, my Lord Shaftesbury, Dr. Mandeville, Mr. Hutchinson, Dr. Butler, &c.” He moreover traced this successful Anglo-Saxon development of tradition to the tolerance and freedom that existed in that country. Hume 1978 (note 14), XVII. 20 Hume’s purpose here was “in avoiding that error, into which so many have fallen, of imposing their conjectures and hypotheses on the world for the most certain principles.” Ibid., XVIII.

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pleasures. Where experiments of that kind are judiciously collected and compared, we may hope to establish on them a science, which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehension.21 In order to create a stable foundation for this most useful of all sciences, Hume developed his epistemology, which is important in the present context to the extent that it established the theoretical starting point and the methodological standards for the later natural historians of the Scottish Enlightenment.22 The distinctiveness of Hume’s epistemology lay in the fact that not only impressions of phenomena, but also ideas about these phenomena were seen as deriving from sensory experience: “In short, all the materials of thinking are derived either from our outward or inward sentiment: the mixture and composition of these belongs alone to the mind and will. Or to express myself in a more philosophical language, all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones.”23 Based on his epistemological finding that every “idea” was preceded by sensory experiences, Hume gave particular attention to these experiences, which he further classified as “sensations” and “reflections”. While he left the study of the “sensations” to anatomists and natural philosophers, he was particularly interested in the “reflections” of the human mind. For, based on the correspondence of sensory experiences, which in turn trig- gered impressions of longing and aversion, hope and fear in the soul, it was the capacity of memory and the power of imagination that generated ideas. Against this background, it is understandable why the human capacity to recall impressions played a special role in Hume’s epistemology.

21 Ibid., XIX. 22 The present study is based on the hypothesis that the so-called Scottish Enlighten- ment received its decisive methodological impulses from Hume. Norbert Waszek has also emphasised this point: “On the road taken by the Scottish Enlightenment, Hume’s Treatise is a milestone whose importance cannot be overestimated.” Norbert Waszek, L’Écosse des Lumières. Hume, Smith, Ferguson (Paris 2003), 37. 23 This statement has been characterised as the “main theorem of empiricism”, which received its classic formulation in the moderated and revised edition of the Treatise, appearing in 1748 as Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. by P.H. Nid- ditch (16th edn., Oxford 1997), 19. After the Treatise, to Hume’s great disappointment, “fell dead-born from the press”, he wanted the Enquiry alone to be regarded as the presentation of his philosophical views and principles. David Hume, ‘My Own Life’, in id., Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. by T.H. Green and T.H. Grose (London 1875), vol. 1, 2. From today’s perspective, however, the Treatise appears to be the more detailed and bolder work in dealing with the boundaries of knowledge.

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“Memory” served not primarily to retain individual ideas but rather to order them and classify them systematically.24 This point brings us to the core of Hume’s intellectual framework, which is supported by the conviction that external order exists independently of our perception and that its actual connections cannot be understood. According to Hume, these connections are “made” intentionally by the individual in order to comprehend and understand the world. The greater degree of scepticism expressed by comparison with his predecessors about what can really be known, and his recourse to the fragile sheet anchor of extremely uncer- tain sensory experience, make clear why David Hume is considered the founder of modern scepticism and simultaneously of empiricism—and also why tension arises between these two positions.25 A sceptical atti- tude about judgments of any sort is necessary in Hume’s system in order to establish observation-based knowledge as a problematic, but nonetheless the only effective form of knowledge.26 Only insight into the limits of knowledge and human reasoning as a construct could distinguish knowledge from belief and protect science from systems of belief that were passed off as principles of primary validity in the scientific tradition that had been predominant up to that point. The principal concern of Hume’s subsequent explications was to aban- don the notion of a necessary or metaphysical link between observed connections and to remain aware of their being “made” (constructed). This applied in particular measure to the connection between past and future, i.e. the question of whether we can expect phenomena observed in the past to occur in the future27—an apparently necessary prerequisite for the epistemic value of empirical studies. Hume’s answer was that this connection can be described only in categories of probability and

24 “An historian may, perhaps for the more convenient carrying on his narration, relate an event before another, to which it was in fact posterior; but then he takes notice of this disorder, if he be exact; and by that means replaces the idea in its due position.” Hume 1978 (note 14), 9. 25 Hume was regarded for a long time primarily as a sceptic in the Anglo-Saxon world. While the perception of Hume as a sceptic critical of religion was also dominant in Ger- many until well into the second half of the eighteenth century, it was Kant who was responsible for labelling Hume as an “empiricist”—the label that later became dominant. Hans-Jürgen Engfer, Empirismus versus Rationalismus? Kritik eines philosophiegeschichtli- chen Schemas (Paderborn 1996), 312f. 26 On Hume’s sceptical position and its contemporary context, see Heiner F. Klemme, ‘Scepticism and common sense’, in Alexander Broadie (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge 2003), 118. 27 Hume 1978 (note 14), 134.

Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access 760 annette meyer possibility, and thus on the basis of the similarity of phenomena.28 More- over, here too Hume pointed out that similarities can be deceptive and that a fortiori no inner connection between observed phenomena can exist beyond experience.29 Transferring experience from the past to the future was not a necessity but a human habit. This was particularly problematic with regard to the connection between cause and effect. Hume made an effort to strip the cause-effect connection of any metaphysical link suggesting a covert force or energy behind it.30 The only recognis- able force behind the necessary connection between cause and effect was the habit of the observer.31 Regular occurrence of phenomena in the roles of cause and effect generated belief in a universal law or a metaphysical force behind them. Hume’s solution to the dilemma of having to adopt a radically sceptical position based on these considerations was a moder- ately sceptical stance, as presented, for example, in the Enquiry Concern- ing Human Understanding: “There is indeed, a more mitigated scepticism or academical philosophy, which may be both durable and useful, and which may, in part, be the result of this Pyrrhonism, or excessive scepticism, when its undistinguished doubts are, in some measure, corrected by common sense and reflection.”32 The intention here was to tame, on the one hand, dogmatic philosophers whose rigidified points of view would be more moderate, more useful and less arrogant if they were aware of the notable weaknesses of the human mind and, on the other hand, the human inclination towards high-flying metaphysical theories. Epoché— the self-restriction of science to such objects as are appropriate to the lim- ited capacities of the human mind—was Hume’s epistemic desideratum.33 In making judgments, the scientist must always account for the limits of the human mind’s capacities and their constructive character and systematically make a method of analysing them.34 Hume’s mitigated scepticism

28 Ibid., 137. 29 “That there is nothing in any object, consider’d in itself, which can afford us a reason for drawing a conclusion beyond it; and, That even after the observation of the frequent or constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience . . .” Ibid., 139. 30 Ibid., 158. 31 “Upon the whole, necessity is something, that exists in the mind, not in the objects . . .” Ibid., 165. Annette C. Baier, A Progress of Sentiments. Reflections on Hume’s Treatise (Har- vard 1994), 70f. 32 Hume 1997 (note 23), 161. 33 Ibid., 162. 34 “It may perhaps be esteemed an endless task to enumerate all those qualities which may objects admit of comparison, and by which the ideas of philosophical relation are produced.” Hume 1978 (note 14), 14.

Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access history in a test tube 761 consequently became a necessary prerequisite for the development of a scientific methodology.35 Hume claimed that connections between ideas took three definitive forms: “RESEMBLANCE, CONTIGUITY in time or place, and CAUSE and EFFECT”.36 Consequently, comparison, analogy and establishing cause- effect relationships were the standard methods to which the scientist of man should be devoted. By contrast with physics or anatomy, however, experiments in the science of man could not be conducted intentionally. As appropriate source material for study Hume therefore recommended travel journals describing “savage” peoples and historical accounts, as these provided information on different stages of “man” as the object to be studied. History, in particular, offered a reservoir of case studies which could take on the function that experiments had in the natural sciences.37 History, in accordance with its traditional function in the scientific framework of the early modern period, provided a databank for the science of man in the form of historia naturalis and historia humana.38 The methodological prerequisite for comparison of simultaneously existing or historical peoples was, however, a premise which made basic comparison possible, i.e. which underpinned the idea of the anthropological equality of historical and contemporary peoples. Important in this context was the idea of the “uniformity of human nature”, which needed to be accepted in order to ensure the universality of research results. Hume had no doubt about this axiom deeply embedded in natural law: “It is universally acknowledged that there is a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages, and that human nature remains still the same, in its principles and operations. The same motives always produce the same actions.”39

35 See Andreas Urs Sommer, ‘Historischer Pyrrhonismus und die Entstehung der spekulativ-universalistischen Geschichtsphilosophie’, in Carlos Spoerhase (ed.), Unsicheres Wissen: Skeptizismus und Wahrscheinlichkeit 1550–1850 (Berlin and New York 2009), 201f. 36 Hume 1978 (note 14), 11. 37 “These records of wars, intrigues, factions, and revolutions, are so many collections of experiments, by which the politician or moral philosopher fixes the principles of his science, in the same manner as the physician or natural philosopher becomes acquainted with the nature of plants, minerals, and other external objects, by the experiments which he forms concerning them.” Hume 1997 (note 23), 83f. 38 In principle, “historia” and the circumstances of what was only later labelled as “empiricism” were used synonymously in the early modern period. See Arno Seifert, Cogni- tio Historica. Die Geschichte als Namengeberin der frühneuzeitlichen Empirie (Berlin 1976). 39 David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Prin- ciples of Morals, ed. by P.H. Nidditch (third edn., Oxford 1989), 83. The assumption of “one” human nature is firmly anchored in the philosophy of natural law. It served above all as the foundation of equality before the law but also as an important basis for egalitarian

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This use of history made clear where Hume’s real epistemological interest lay. The inductive method was no longer to be applied only to questions in natural philosophy but also to the study of the motives for human action. If regularities in the conditio humana could be identified, it should then be possible to establish a moral philosophy with an empirical basis. The universal principles that would come from this science were consequently not to be found in the historical process but in human nature. Hume intended to use scientifically validated knowledge about human motives to gain knowledge about the overarching structures of the human species, as he had done for the phenomenon of belief in his Natural His- tory of Religion.40 History itself remained a realm that could not be com- prehended scientifically, whose laws could not be deciphered. The use of history for Hume lay in the tradition of historia-magistra-vitae and, of course, in entertainment, which he so impressively demonstrated as an exceptionally successful writer of history.41

From Natural History to the Natural History of Mankind: Ferguson

In developing his concept of the science of man, Hume focused his attention primarily on questions of epistemology. This left the task of further development of the operational level of natural history to Hume’s combatants among the Scottish scholars and to the subsequent generation. An additional important building block for the concrete development of natural history was the reception of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s theory of perfectibility, which Hume had rejected and which appeared to contradict

thinking in social theory in the conceptualisation of “civil society”. At the same time, however, the uniformity of human nature taken as a fact must be distinguished from the methodological premise of “de iure” equal subjects under the law, as in Hobbes’ social contract. Otto Dann, ‘Einleitung’, in id. and Diethelm Klippel (eds.), Naturrecht, Spätaufklärung, Revolution (Hamburg 1995), 1. 40 Hume’s term “natural history” was traced in particular to his work on the natural history of religion with the same title. David Hume, ‘The Natural History of Religion’, in id. 1875 (note 23), 307–363. For Dugald Stewart, an advocate of the Scottish Enlighten- ment, Hume’s ‘Natural History of Religion’ even set the style for a new historiographical genre which he labelled “Conjectural History”: “. . . [A]n expression which coincides pretty nearly in its meaning with that of Natural History, as employed by Mr. Hume [*see his Natural History of Religion] . . .” Dugald Stewart, ‘An Account of the Life and Writings of the Author’, in Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects (Basil 1799), XLVII. 41 On Hume’s understanding of history, see Annette Meyer, Von der Wahrheit zur Wahrscheinlichkeit. Die Wissenschaft vom Menschen in der schottischen und deutschen Aufklärung (Tübingen 2008), 102f.

Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access history in a test tube 763 the theory of the uniformity of human nature, as it assumed that human beings had a natural capacity for perfection. Rousseau’s “idea of perfectibility” hit the academic world like a bang and became an object of both criticism and admiration. In any event, dealing with Rousseau’s theory of the perfectibility and depravity of mankind was a frequent starting point for considerations of human history, and perfectibilité entered the English and German languages as a borrowed word.42 Rousseau’s Sur l’origine et les fondemens de l’inégalité parmi les hom- mes, published in 1755, was the subject of a critical review in the Edin- burgh Review by the young Scottish professor of moral philosophy Adam Smith, who believed that the large-scale project of an Histoire Naturelle proposed by the French scholar Buffon and his colleague Daubenton was superior to Rousseau’s theories.43 Whereas Smith expressed doubts about the juxtaposition of the halcyon state of nature and the concept of development inclining towards depravity, which in his eyes was the product of a certain amount of gimmickry, he found the many precise observations and experiments in Buffon’s theory of development to be convincing.44 He shared this assessment with his colleagues Henry Home, Lord Kames; James Burnett, Lord Monboddo; and Adam Ferguson, for all of whom Buf- fon’s Histoire Naturelle offered an inexhaustible reservoir of natural histo- ries and was an important impetus for explanation of the development of humankind. In his extraordinarily successful textbook Institutes of Moral Philosophy, published in 1769, Adam Ferguson even decidedly followed Buffon’s concept of natural history,45 combining Hume’s science of man and Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle into a natural history of mankind: “These

42 See Gottfried Hornig, ‘Perfektibilität’, Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte 24 (1980), 226. On the reception of the French Enlightenment in Scotland, see the cursory overview by John H. Brumfitt, ‘Scotland and the French Enlightenment’, in William H. Barber, John H. Brum- fitt and Ralph A. Leigh (eds.), The Age of the Enlightenment (Edinburgh and London 1967), 323. On the German equivalent “Vervollkommnung”, see Reinhart Koselleck, ‘Fortschritt’, in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhart Koselleck (eds.), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Stuttgart 1979), 8 vols., II: 379. 43 Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle ranked before Carl von Linnés Systema Natura (1735) and Albrecht von Haller’s Elementa physiologiae (1757–1766) as the most frequently purchased compendium in the University Library of Edinburgh in the period 1762–1792. See MS. Da. 1. 46. (EUL), unpaginated. 44 On the significance of Buffon’s concept of development for proto-evolutionary historical thought in the Enlightenment, see Peter Hanns Reill, Vitalizing Nature in the Enlightenment (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 2005). 45 Adam Ferguson, Institutes of Moral Philosophy. For the Use of the Students in the College of Edinburgh (second edn., Edinburgh and London 1773), 15. See also Henry Home, Lord Kames, Sketches on the History of Man (second edn., Edinburgh and London 1778), 4 vols., I: 5.

Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access 764 annette meyer institutes contain heads from which lectures are given, which comprise masterly reflections on the history of mankind, and an instructive analysis of the human mind,” read an exceptionally laudatory review of the second edition of the Institutes in the Edinburgh Magazine and Review.46 This resulted in a clear dissolution of the boundaries of the project as Hume had originally conceived it. The human being as an isolated phenomenon in the experimental arena of history seemed to Ferguson to be chimeri- cal. He came instead to the conclusion that human beings follow their progressive nature, which is the expression of their unchanging essence. They generate the laws of the system of humanity through their ambition to achieve progress: “The bulk of mankind are, like other parts of the system, subjected to the laws of their nature, and without knowing it, are led to accomplish its purpose.”47 Human development, without being aware of it, was pursuing its goal—the advance of mankind, or humanity. Ferguson was one of the earliest theorists to see the concept of mankind as determined by a blend of the normative (humanity) and the phyloge- netic (species), as analysed by Hans Erich Bödeker in a conceptual study.48 Ferguson’s stratagem as a natural historian consisted in recognising the principle of human development in the nature of mankind. Hence mankind is both the subject and the object of human history. The progress of the species, for which Ferguson adopted the term “civilisation” for the English-speaking world,49 was not intended by the will of the individual human being; rather, the processes of human history were alike by virtue of the uniformity of human motives—their unintended consequences.50 In this sense Ferguson remained true to the spiritus rector of the science of man, David Hume, who was unwilling to recognise inevitable necessity at work in the progress of the species. Humans, by contrast with plants and animals, owing to their free will were in a position to influence the process themselves, although there was a constant risk of this process taking a circular course. This idea explains why Ferguson, like

46 The Edinburgh Magazine and Review 1 (1773/74), 103. 47 Adam Ferguson, Principles of Moral and Political Science; Being Chiefly a Retrospect of Lectures Delivered in the College of Edinburgh (Edinburgh 1792), 2 vols., I: 201. 48 Hans Erich Bödeker, ‘Menschheit, Humanität, Humanismus’, in Brunner, Conze and Koselleck 1979 (note 42), III: 1063–1128. 49 See Jean Starobinski, ‘Das Wort Zivilisation’, in id., Das Rettende in der Gefahr. Kunst griffe der Aufklärung (Frankfurt/M. 1990), 9–64. 50 For the “theory of unintended consequences” in the Scottish Enlightenment, see Ronald Hamowy, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Theory of Spontaneous Order (Car- bondale 1987), 7f.

Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access history in a test tube 765 his model Montesquieu and many other historians of the eighteenth century, were so intensely preoccupied with the history of the fall of Rome,51 which appeared to constitute an experimental situation that illustrated the historical fallacy of applying a linear model of development to human history.

Crossing the Threshold to the Laboratory of History: Millar and Buchan

John Millar, a young professor of law in Glasgow and a student of Adam Smith, was less cautious when it came to the laboratory of history. In his Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, Millar sought to examine neither human nature nor the motives for human action. He focused instead on the historical causes of political and social change themselves. Research into these causes would make it possible to deduce legal norms that could stabilise society and thereby to have an effect on the moral status of the members of society.52 By contrast with his predecessors, Millar had greater faith in contemporary natural philosophy and in the possibility of knowing “historical truths”; but if this possibility was to be successfully realised and go beyond hypothetical assumptions, it would be necessary in methodological terms to follow precisely the inductive procedures of natural philosophy.53 According to Millar, the error in reasoning in Rousseau’s model of depravity lay in his view of the spirit of freedom as the natural disposition of human beings which diminished successively as civilisation progressed. Millar contested this romantic ideal of mankind’s natural state citing the lack of historical evidence to support it. In his view it was only with the advent of private property that a social hierarchy developed, and it was from the structure of subordination inherent to hierarchy that the striving for liberty first emerged.54 Only a study of historical circumstances could

51 Iain McDaniel, ‘Ferguson, Roman History and the Threat of Military Government in Modern Europe’, in Eugene Heath and Vincenzo Merolle (eds.), Adam Ferguson: History, Progress and Human Nature (London 2008), 118f. 52 John Millar, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks. An Inquiry into the Circumstances Which Gave Rise to the Influence and Authority in the Different Members of Society (fourth edn., Edinburgh 1806), 4. 53 Millar mentions Newton, Locke, Hume and Smith as his models in English philosophy. John Millar, ‘Letter I to the Editor of the Scots Chronicle 1796’, in id., The Letters of Crito e Letters of Sidney, ed. by Vincenzo Merolle (Rome 1984), 45. 54 “Where ever men of inferior condition are enabled to live in affluence by their own industry, and in procuring their livelihood, have little occasion to court the favour of their

Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access 766 annette meyer explain the development of inequality and thus the reasons for suppres- sion of the idea of freedom.55 Millar’s ideas were consequently concerned neither with mankind’s natural state nor with detailed anthropological foundations but with the development of society itself. This makes it clear that Millar, by contrast with Ferguson, was writing not as a moral philosopher but as a legal historian.56 It was not timeless norms of action that were to be deduced from history but the causes of political and social change, in order to be able to formulate legal norms to stabilise society which would in turn have an effect on human beings. The goal of “civil liberty” for him was not the moral conduct of the citizen within the “polis”, as it was for Ferguson, but the sovereign legal status of equal citizens. “Commercial society” thus offered a chance, through the possibility of independent gainful employment, to abolish social inequality and create the basis for equality among citizens.57 The idea of the “natural progress of mankind” arose with Millar—as it did with Ferguson—from a combina- tion of the theory of perfectibility with the assumption that human nature remained constant.58 A clear dissolution of the boundaries of this model came about, however, to the extent that Millar linked “perfectibility” and “uniformity” with the process of history itself: “There is, however, in man a disposition and capacity for improving his condition, by the exertion of which, he is carried on from one degree of advancement to another; and

superiors, there we may expect that the ideas of liberty will be universally diffused.” Millar 1806 (note 52), 241f. 55 In addition to legal questions, John Millar was also interested in the political issues of his time. By contrast with Adam Ferguson, he was among those who favoured the struggle for independence in the American colonies, and he remained a convinced believer in the French Revolution even after the beheading of King Louis XVI: “In the proportion as the French Revolution was grateful to those who rejoiced in the extension of political liberty, it gave rise to the unpleasant sensations in the absolute sovereigns of Europe. Their authority was obviously founded on opinion; and that opinion rested on old custom and prejudice. If the people should once be led to think upon the subject of government, they must immediately see the absurdity of sacrificing their lives, and everything they hold valuable, to the private interest, to the avarice and ambition, to the whim and caprice of a single individual. They must immediately see that government is intended, by the wise and good Author of nature, for the benefit of the whole community; and that every power, inconsistent with this great principle, assumed by any person, king, or emperor, is manifestly unjust and tyrannical.” John Millar, ‘Letters II–XV to the Editor of the Scots Chronicle 1796’, in id. 1984 (note 53), 52f. 56 The writings of Lord Kames were a model for Millar and for his teacher, Adam Smith, in terms of legal theory applied to human history. See Peter Stein, ‘Law and Society in Eighteenth-Century Scottish Thought’, in Nicholas Phillipson and Rosalind Mitchison (eds.), Scotland in the Age of Improvement (Edinburgh 1970), 159. 57 Millar 1806 (note 52), 295. 58 Ibid., 4.

Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access history in a test tube 767 the similarity of his wants, as well as of the faculties by which those wants are supplied, has every where produced a remarkable uniformity in the several steps of his progression.”59 This step of applying anthropological constants to the development of society illustrates the transition from the science of man to a natural history of mankind.60 It was a step from the primacy of anthropology to the study of the social and the historical from an anthropological perspective, to which Hume had denied an independent epistemic value and the claim to scientificity. The development of mankind according to John Millar, by contrast, was understood as a substantial process of emancipation in the direction of a mature civil society that afforded the ideal expression of human existence. Self-preservation as a basic principle of unchanging human nature and perfectibility were combined into one as a basis for the study of mankind.61 It was precisely in the preoccupation with the natural history of mankind in its different states—from “rude” to “refined”—that progress in reason appeared to manifest itself, both in individuals and in the progress of human history. This at least was the conviction of a prominent student of Smith and Millar, David Steuart Erskine, Earl of Buchan:62 Nor is the change in the condition of man, in consequence to the progress of reason, by any means contrary to the general analogy of his natural history. In the infancy of the individual, his existence is preserved by instincts, which disappear afterwards, when they are no longer necessary. In the savage state of our species, there are instincts which seem to form a part of the human constitution, and of which no traces remain in those periods of society in which their use is superseded by a more enlarged experience.63

59 Ibid., 2f. 60 “The following Inquiry is intended to illustrate the natural history of mankind in several important articles. This is attempted, by pointing out the more obvious and common improvements which gradually arise in the state of society, and by showing the influence of these upon the manners, the laws, and the government of a people”. Ibid., 11. Use of the terms “Natural History of Mankind” (Ferguson, Millar) and “History of Mankind” (Lord Kames, James Dunbar) increased noticeably in the second half of the eighteenth century; they can be interpreted as a clear expression of the expansion of the older anthropological concepts of “Science of Man” (Hume) or “Observations on Man” (David Hartley). 61 Günther Buck, ‘Selbsterhaltung und Historizität’, in Hans Ebeling (ed.), Subjektivität und Selbsterhaltung. Beiträge zur Diagnose der Moderne (Frankfurt/M. 1996), 217. 62 Emma Vincent Macleod, ‘Erskine, David Steuart, eleventh earl of Buchan (1742– 1829)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford 2004), vol. XVII, 524–526. 63 David Steuart Erskine, Earl of Buchan presented these thoughts regarding his hopes “of the progress of the human race” under the pen name Albanicus in a book review in 1792. Erskine, a Scottish nobleman who had studied under Millar in Glasgow, counted himself among the supporters of the French Revolution prior to 1791 and advocated demo- cratic election of Scottish representatives in the British Parliament. His open optimism

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Based on these considerations, there arose for Buchan the further question of whether similar development in the future might not be hoped for in the political and social order as well: “Why then should we deny the probability of something similar to this in the history of man, considered in his political capacity?”64 Knowledge of the emancipation of the independent subject from natural constraints might hold out the prospect of the same emancipation for the political order, thus opening a perspective on a future that could be freely determined.65 The possibility of shaping future development freely would nevertheless have to be based on know ledge of the laws of nature, which could affect human motives and, in the eyes of some theorists, now also the course of society itself.66 This consti- about progress was shared by few of his academic colleagues; yet it marked a tenor found in many popular articles of the late Scottish Enlightenment. [Anonymous], ‘On [Dugald] Stuart’s Elements [of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Edinburgh, 3 vols., 1792–1827]’, The Bee, or a Literary Weekly Intelligencer 10 (1792), 145. On identification of the name behind the pseudonym, see William Cushing (ed.), Initials and Pseudonyms. A Diction- ary of Literary Disguise (London 1886), 8. Ian Simpson Ross describes Buchan, as “fearless in thought and deed to an extent that was outright eccentric.” Ian Simpson Ross, Adam Smith. Leben und Werk (Düsseldorf 1998), 209. 64 Buchan 1792 (note 63), 145. 65 Adam Ferguson interpreted the apparent imperfection of human nature as a driving force that would validate his determination of possible perfection through the history of mankind: “That the birth of a man is more painful and hazardous; that the state of his infancy is more helpless, and of longer duration, than is exemplified in the case of any other species, may be ranked with the apparent comparative defects of his animal nature: But this circumstance, we may venture to affirm, like many others of his seeming defects, is of a peace with that superior destination, which remains to be fulfilled in the subsequent history of mankind.” Ferguson 1792 (note 47), I: 28. This passage clearly shows the sepa- ration between the categories of “experience” and “expectation”, described by Reinhart Koselleck as essential for the development of historical thought. Understanding of past and present and the opening of a changed perspective on the future were to blend into a coherent development process—the “history of mankind”. Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (second edn., Frankfurt 1992), 362f. 66 Buchan here again takes a very pronounced position: “. . . [A]nd therefore what we commonly call political order, is, at least in a great measure, the result of the passions and wants of man, combined with the circumstances of his situation, or, in other words, it is chiefly the result of the wisdom of nature. So beautifully, indeed, do these passions and circumstances act in subserviency to her designs; and so invariable have they been found, in the history of past ages, to conduct men, in time, to certain beneficial arrangements, that we can hardly bring ourselves to believe that the end is not foreseen by those who were engaged in the pursuit. Even in those rude periods of society, when, like the lower animal, he follows blindly his instinctive principles of action, he is led by an invisible hand, and contributes his share to the execution of a plan, of the nature and advantages of which he has no conception . . .” Buchan 1792 (note 63), 145f. Buchan’s use of the term “invisible hand” is a clear reference to Adam Smith, whom he acknowledges as his mentor at the beginning of the article. Buchan describes himself as the “subject of historian ages” in the context of the changes that had occurred in philosophy over the previous 40 years. Buchan 1792 (note 63), 141. See Kittsteiner 1980 (note 12), 34f.

Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access history in a test tube 769 tuted a shift of interest from the science of man to the natural history of mankind, where fresh ground was broken in particular among the younger generation of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers and in the popular editions of their writings.67 The stratagem of applying anthropological constants to the historical process itself gave rise to a new scientific object: history. History, accord- ingly, did not consist of ephemeral, contingent events but was instead a realm of scientific research. The unchanging internal laws of uniformity and perfectibility recognised in this approach created the coordinates of a predictable space-time continuum that could be explored with the help of experiments. “Savage” peoples could serve as the objects of experiment and be compared with pre-modern peoples, drawing parallels by analogy and thereby substituting the missing pieces in the background to natural history. Consequently, the methods of comparison and conclusion by analogy, borrowed from mathematics and recommended by Hume for decon- structive use, made it possible not only to explain respective unevenness of development in the progress of the species but were also appropriate for interpreting this unevenness as a tribute to being more or less well equipped to fulfil the destiny of mankind. The coupling of temporal structure with cause-effect relationship appeared to make it possible as well to project potential further developments in the future. Natural history in the late Scottish Enlightenment no longer served the study of human nature as Hume had conceived it in his science of man. The central focus of interest was now the development of mankind, which was condensed into a complex theory of history in which “intention of nature”68 or an “invisible hand”69 replaced “divine force”. In the course of the continuing

67 A popular version followed, for example, in the successful compilation published by John Adams, Curious Thoughts in the History of Man; Chiefly Abridged and Selected from the Celebrated Works from Lord Kaimes, Lord Monboddo, Dr Dunbar, and the Immortal Mon- tesquieu: Replete with Useful and Entertainment Instruction, on a Variety of Important and Popular Subjects. Designed to Promote a Spirit of Enquiry in the British Youth of Both Sexes. And to Make the Philosophy as well as the History of the Human Species, Familiar to Ordinary Capacities (London 1789). 68 “Intention of nature” [Naturabsicht] was used by Kant to denote the “history of nature” as determined by God, which found its expression in the natural predisposition of the individual. Kant’s argumentation followed the same lines as the discourse of his contemporaries when he interpreted the increasing “use of reason” not as a component of individual development but as a project of the species. See Immanuel Kant, ‘Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht’, in id., Werke in sechs Bänden, ed. by W. Weischedel (Darmstadt 1998), vol. 6, A 387, 388 and 389. 69 The term “invisible hand” appears in different places in Adam Smith’s writings and, with reference to the individual, is used as an expression of the “theory of unintended

Annette Meyer - 9789004243910 Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 03:17:52PM via free access 770 annette meyer development of the concept of natural history, the methodological stratagems and epistemologically guiding theories had themselves slowly become the ontological determinants of the process. This was a fear that had moved Haller and Hume, based on very different motivations, to restrict themselves with regard to methodology. It is not without irony that the guardian of the pantheon of empiricism, Henry Thomas Buckle, expressed his reverence for the scholarship and the methods of Albrecht von Haller, whereas he characterised the Scot- tish scholars as typical representatives of unreflecting deduction: “. . . they regarded such inductions as unimportant in themselves, and as only valuable in so far as they supplied the premisses for another and deductive investigation.” On this basis it was not difficult for Buckle in The History of Civilisation—a book not lacking in opinions—to distinguish two types of scholars: “The inductive philosopher is naturally cautious, patient and somewhat creeping; while the deductive philosopher is more remarkable for boldness, dexterity and often rashness”.70 In the reconstruction of scholars in action, and particularly when it comes to Albrecht von Haller, we will leave it at the qualities “cautious and patient”.

consequences”. Adam Smith, ‘An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of the Nations’, in The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (Oxford 1976), 6 vols., II: 456. With respect to the species, Smith uses the term as a metaphor for contingent universal laws in natural history. Adam Smith, ‘The History of Astronomy’, ibid., III: 49. 70 Henry Thomas Buckle, Introduction to the History of Civilization in England (1857–61), ed. by J.M. Robertson (London and New York 1904), 798.

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